The present invention relates generally to a client and server system for presenting multimedia information and, more particularly, to an integrated internet on-demand system for television.
The internet is a collection of networks, including those maintained by commercial backbone providers such as MCI, PSINet, UUNET, and Sprint. The term "internet" applies to this entire set of interconnecting networks. Domain names, such as uspto.gov, are unique internet server addresses which function as the cyberspace addresses for organizations connected to the internet.
Interest in the internet has been increasing recently, especially in regard to e-mail and what has become known as the World Wide Web, which allows information on the internet to be presented through a graphical interface. The World Wide Web is a major client-server system, with millions of users, and is essentially a vast collection of interconnected documents.
Typically, on the internet, a larger computer is a server and a smaller computer is a client. A client can be a personal computer which is associated with the user. The client computer is connected to the internet via a modem connection, typically to a server at a point-of-presence (POP), the location of an access point to the internet. A client can use any of the servers, and often uses a series of them. The primary purpose of a server is to deliver a document on request to a client. The document may be text, an image file, or other type of file. The document is identified by a name called a Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") which typically includes the domain name of an organization. If the server is storing that particular URL, then the server delivers the document at that URL to the client in response.
Browsing software (i.e., web browsers) allow client users to request and display text and graphics, typically from a Hyper Text Markup Language ("html") document or web page identified by a URL on a web site server. When accessing web pages over the internet, a client user may reference an html document containing hypertext links to other documents, which may have URL addresses to different servers. When a link is selected, the browser is expected to fetch the new document and display it in place of the current one. In this manner, information from different internet servers can be linked together through documents containing such links. These links may be organized according to topics so that the links grouped under a particular topic relate to addresses for web pages which deal with related subject matter. For example, the U.S. House of Representatives' web server hosts html documents at URL address http://law.house.gov which contain links to a variety of other web pages generally relating to legal issues, including patent law. However, these links are presented to the user in a static manner, often with little guiding information.
Requesting web pages from servers using a client browser is commonly referred to colloquially as surfing the web. Although the use of animation, as well as audio and video, is becoming more common, the majority of web sites generally only present static graphocal images. Even with data compression techniques, graphical files are notoriously large and slow to download given the limited bandwidth available over existing telephone modem connections. A web page having a large number of graphical images can take several minutes to retrieve. Audio and video files are typically very large, and can take even longer to completely download. This can result in long and frequent delays in retrieving and using such files.
However, the typical television viewer is accustomed to a near immediate response when selecting a channel or television station to watch. Although off-line browsing allows a client user to view pages already stored in cache memory from previously visited web sites, these documents are often not meaningfully organized, such as by topical subject matter for easy assimilation by the client user. Nor do these cached pages necessarily represent the most recent version of the pages available from the web site of interest.
Along with the increasing interest in the internet and the world wide web, appliances or set-top boxes similar to cable TV boxes have been developed in an attempt to allow access to the internet through the traditional television set. However, such attempts suffer from delays in accessing the graphics of the web, and the lack of experience in the mass-market with regard to the internet, especially in regard to finding and accessing relevant web pages of interest. Mass-market consumers are typically accustomed to having information broadcasted or delivered to them with minimal effort or delay.
The practice or technology of having information brought to a client user by an agent is sometimes referred to as push. Pushed information appears to have been initiated by the server rather than by the client or the user. However, in current systems, the information pushed from a server to a user often comes as the result of a programmed request from the client in the user's computer. Information pushers often require that the client download a program which often determines the useful data desired by the user and then occasionally initiates requests for information from the server. However, users may find such questionnaires to be burdensome, and may not completely and accurately complete the questionnaire.
Hence, there has been a long existing need for a system which is capable of navigating the internet efficiently so as to provide text, images, sound, and video on-demand in a simple, intuitive manner akin to traditional television programming for mass-market consumers. The present invention fulfills these needs.